It was in 1950 that Immanuel Velikovsky published his
groundbreaking work, Worlds in Collision. triggering one of the
most heated scientific controversies in this century. Based on a
reading of mythical and historical material from around the world,
Velikovsky described a series of catastrophes which he claimed
occurred between 1500 BC and 686 BC, and he said that the agents
of these disasters were planets moving on erratic courses. Most
controversial of all was his claim that a few thousand years ago
the planet Venus roamed the heavens as a terrifying "comet," whose
catastrophic near collisions with the Earth brought an end to
numerous civilizations.

In his labors to comprehend early human history, Velikovsky
commanded respect from many intellectual giants of the twentieth
century: Sigmund Freud and Freud's first pupil Wilhelm Stekel;
Harvard historian Robert Pfeifer; Harry Hess, one of the world's
most respected geologists; noted French archaeologist, Claude
Schaefer; and Albert Einstein, who edited the physics and
mathematics section of Velikovsky's Scripta Universitatis.
But this respect from such distinguished scientists and scholars
would not redeem Velikovsky in the eyes of the larger scientific
community, whose responses ranged from anger to misrepresentation and ridicule.

The sweeping dismissal of Velikovsky by science implied that no
fundamental aspect of his work had the slightest merit. And yet,
even if Velikovsky was only correct at some elementary level,
his treatment by the scientific elite will rank as one of the
darkest marks on science in modern times. The prospect that
major theoretical edifices could collapse under the impact of
Velikovsky's revelations is hardly a small matter either.

THE ESSENTIAL VELIKOVSKY

Velikovsky saw in ancient literature, with its pervasive imagery
of disaster and improbable monsters in the sky, a story of
planetary instability. And he argued that the records of early
cultures permit a reconstruction of the crucial events. Whether
Velikovsky was correct in the details of his analysis is another
matter. But our first interest is in the fundamental concepts:

1. The planetary system was unstable in geologically recent times,
and the present order of the solar system is new.

4. World mythology and ancient astronomical traditions preserve
vivid accounts of these events.

5. Both Venus and Mars were directly involved in earth-disturbing
encounters.

6. The planet Venus took the form of an earth-threatening comet.

These vital tenets of Velikovsky's work, we believe, will find
converging support from both historical testimony and physical
evidence. And certainly one cannot deny that, since the
publication of Worlds in Collision, a major shift in scientific
perspective has occurred.

When Worlds in Collision appeared in 1950, astronomers and
geologists were entirely captivated by 19th century models,
in which global catastrophes had no place in the history of the
solar system, the evolution of the Earth, or the human past.
But under the influence of space age discovery, has it been
Velikovskians, or Velikovsky's critics, who have have lost the most ground?

In the past two decades the notion of cometary catastrophe has
emerged as a great fascination to science, and while this
fascination is often focused on an apparent global disaster
linked to extinction of the dinosaurs, it now extends as well
to speculations on more recent cometary disasters. A good
example is the work of the British astronomers, Victor Clube
and William Napier, authors of The Cosmic Serpent, and Cosmic
Winter, offering a theory of doomsday comets that not only
sounds a lot like Velikovsky, but IS Velikovskian in more ways
than one.

VELIKOVSKY'S SATURN HYPOTHESIS

In addition to the well-publicized claims of Worlds in
Collision, Velikovsky had, in an unpublished manuscript, set
forth an extraordinary idea. He suggested that in the earliest=
remembered time, the Earth was joined with other planets in a
planetary arrangement vastly different from anything we observe
today. He suggested that the Earth was a satellite of the planet
Saturn, a planet Velikovsky associated with a former Golden Age
or paradisiacal condition on earth. He identified Saturn as the
"dying god" of ancient lore, and he claimed that a disruption
of Saturn was responsible for the mythical Deluge, a global
catastrophe which brought Saturn's Golden Age to an end and
gave rise to a new epoch dominated by the planet Jupiter. But
over the last 25 years of his life the details of his Saturn
research remained sketchy, and nothing more than a few pages
was ever published.

Investigation of the Saturn question did not stop with
Velikovsky, however. Over the past three decades a few
independent researchers, inspired by Velikovsky's speculations,
have pursued the question in great depth, exposing a collective
memory far beyond anything suggested by Velikovsky himself.

A SATURN MODEL

In the broadest sense, the hypothesis we present in these pages
will offer a new way of viewing the human past. Our thesis is
that the myth-making phase of human history arose as a direct
response to natural phenomena no longer present. Astronomers
and astrophysicists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists,
and students of ancient myth and religion are asked to
reconsider common assumptions about the ancient world,
including many that have rarely if ever been questioned.

We agree with Velikovsky that major changes in the planetary
order have occurred within human memory and that our ancestors
preserved a global record of tumultuous, Earth-threatening
events. Moreover, we intend to demonstrate that the origin of
the first civilizations is simply inexplicable apart from
ritual practices honoring, imitating, and re-living these
extraordinary natural occurrences. The dominant powers
celebrated in ancient myths and rites were planets moving close
to the earth.

That the present order of the solar system may be
extraordinarily recent, and that planet-sized bodies appeared
gigantic in our sky will not be easily believed in an age
accustomed to billion-year scenarios of planet formation
and evolution. Nevertheless, the model we shall present has
one advantage that prior theories based on ancient testimony
have lacked: it is specific enough to be easily falsified if
wrong. Whatever else one may think of our reconstruction,
it meets that universal test of a good theory.

The theory holds that our Earth formerly moved in a congregation
of planets unlike anything observed today. For earthbound
witnesses, the result was a spectacular and at times highly
unified planetary form in the heavens, visually dominated by
the gas giant Saturn.

POLAR CONFIGURATION

A fear-inspiring form, constituted by Saturn and an assembly of
planets and moons, stretched across the northern sky, towering
over the ancient world. We've termed this the "polar
configuration" because it was centered on the north celestial
Pole. And we've proposed that the history of this
configuration is the history of the ancient gods, recorded in
the fantastic stories, pictographs, and ritual reenactments of
the first sky worshippers. Included in the evidence we shall
consider are the following highly enigmatic patterns which
can be documented around the world:

Remarkably similar pictures of a primeval "sun" in the sky,
depicted as an immense sphere shining at night.

An astronomically "absurd" crescent placed on the orb of
this "sun;"

An equally absurd "star" placed in the center of the "sun."

Universal chronicles of a cosmic mountain, a pillar of fire
and light rising along the world axis.

A radiant "city" or "temple" of heaven, providing the prototype
for sacred dwellings on earth.

An angry or lamenting goddess, raging across the sky with
wildly disheveled hair and threatening to destroy the world.

A fiery serpent or dragon disturbing the celestial motions and
throwing the world into darkness.

An ancestral warrior or hero, born from the womb of the star-
goddess to vanquish the chaos-serpent or dragon.

Is it possible that such diverse images (we've cited only the
barest few among hundreds) could have a unified explanation?
Our claim will be that the common patterns of world mythology
answer to a simple planetary model. And in this sense, our model
can properly claim to provide a unified theory of ancient myth and
symbolism.

It needs to be emphasized, therefore, that this model is fully
testable against a massive historical record, and we invite
systematic evaluation of the reconstruction by qualified
researchers. Additionally, the model will suggest numerous
tests within the physical sciences, relating to expected
physical markers on planets and moons. If the claimed events
occurred, our Earth must have been affected in dramatic ways,
and this would include effects so unlikely under the usual
assumptions of science as to constitute a series of critical
tests.

Of course the subject is far too vast to be summarized adequately
in a few pages. In several cases the broad themes identified
will require separate volumes—they are simply noted, perhaps with
an illustration or two. Our immediate goal is to substantiate an
underlying idea—that the recurring themes of myth and symbol are
not the isolated fragments historians have assumed, but intimately
connected pieces of a whole, all tied to identifiable forms in the
sky.

[NOTE ON THE CO-AUTH0RS OF THE PRESENT VOLUME]

David Talbott was serving as publisher of Pensée magazine's
"Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered" series in 1972, when he received
a two-page summary of Velikovsky's Saturn material. That began an
intensive research project to investigate Saturn's place in world
mythology.

In The Saturn Myth (Doubleday, 1980) Talbott presented evidence of
the planet Saturn's central role in ancient myths of beginnings
The book summarized the mythical Golden Age of Saturn and claimed
that a spectacular planetary configuration once towered over mankind.
It argued further that this unique planetary arrangement provided
the objective source for numerous mythical and symbolic forms
recorded by ancient civilizations on every continent (world pillar,
world mountain, eye goddess, wheel of the sun, celestial city, bull
of heaven, etc.)—images that historians and mythologists have
always regarded as metaphors with little if any concrete reference
in nature.

In 1980, Ev Cochrane, then a graduate student at Iowa State
University, was pursuing independent research on Velikovsky when
a correspondent recommended Talbott's book. His reading of the
book led eventually to communication with Talbott and the
beginnings of collaboration extending over many years. Cochrane
is now the publisher of AEON: A Journal of Myth, Science, and
Ancient History, founded by Talbott in 1987. He is also author
of the volume, Martian Metamorphoses, published in 1997,
exploring the role of Mars in the ancient planetary configuration.
Talbott, in his turn, published a notebook "Symbols of an Alien
Sky" in 1997, offering a visual summary of key phases in the
evolution of the planetary assembly. Both Talbott and Cochrane
have, together with fellow "Saturn theorist," Dwardu Cardona,
published many articles in AEON discussing aspects of the hypothesis.
The present book begins the authors' efforts to clarify the
reconstruction through a series of volumes.